Data compression is the compacting of data by decreasing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed data requires less disk space than the original one, so more content might be stored using the same amount of space. You can find various compression algorithms that function in different ways and with many of them just the redundant bits are deleted, therefore once the info is uncompressed, there is no loss of quality. Others delete unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data later will lead to lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a significant amount of system resources, especially CPU processing time, therefore each and every web hosting platform which uses compression in real time must have ample power to support this attribute. An example how info can be compressed is to substitute a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of sequential 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the entire code.

Data Compression in Cloud Hosting

The compression algorithm used by the ZFS file system which runs on our cloud hosting platform is named LZ4. It can enhance the performance of any website hosted in a cloud hosting account with us since not only does it compress info more effectively than algorithms used by other file systems, but it uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard drive reading speeds. This is achieved by using a great deal of CPU processing time, that is not a problem for our platform for the reason that it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. One more advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to generate backup copies more quickly and on reduced disk space, so we will have multiple daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not influence the performance of the servers. This way, we can always restore any kind of content that you could have erased by accident.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account will be created on a cloud platform which is run on the cutting-edge ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm known as LZ4, which is far better than various other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is apparent especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 much faster than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a hard drive. That is why sites running on a platform that uses LZ4 compression perform faster because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backup copies of the semi-dedicated accounts which we keep need less space and they are generated quicker, which allows us to store multiple daily backups of all your files and databases.